Last week or so (time blurs at the end of the school year) my teaching partner asked me to do her a huge favor: go through the Scholastic and Arrow book orders and spend her 6000 points on books for the kids in her class. I laughed. This wasn’t going to feel like a job at all; this would be a delight.
She has a couple of boys in her class who really like non-fiction, and history in general. One boy, Bryan, has become a biography-nut since our writing unit on biographies. So, for two of the boys in her class, I chose this book
Bugged: How Insects Changed History by Sarah Albee is a fun romp through some of the icky and funny parts of human history. With chapter titles like
The Horrible History of Human Hygiene
Medieval Microbes
More Thinking but Still Stinking
It’s All Fun & Games Until Someone Loses an Isle
you know Albee will mix a lot of humor with the gruesome to make it palatable. Figuratively, not literally. each chapter is broken into parts with headings and the illustrations, some originals by Robert Leighton, some reproductions from the period covered, give readers a sense of what life might have looked like at the time. Each chapter is amply illustrated and has sidebars that add even more zest to the disgusting facts Albee writes about. Backmatter includes a glossary, further reading and surfing, notes of sources, picture credits and an index.This is a well-researched book that every history teacher should have to spice up their units. Upper elementary and middle school teachers would do well to add this to their classroom libraries. But be prepared for groans and gags from the kids as they read it.
booksandbassets 